BY DON BOXMEYER
Pioneer Press
Thu, Feb. 15, 2007
He counted off his many blessings, one after another, on his toes. Fingers? He doesn't have those. Bruce has no arms.
Bruce is 85, Nathalie is 82, and they were both born small in a large world. They both had full-size parents and standard-issue siblings. And they've both had a lifetime to digest and shrug off all the insensitivities that are somehow reserved for those who are deemed different.
"I needed a pacemaker a few years back," Bruce recalls, "and a doctor described how it would work. He said, 'We put it in your chest and then run wires down your arms.'
"I said, 'But I have no arms.' The doctor just got up and left the room.
"He didn't even say 'goodbye.' "
I last wrote about the Caseys in 1991, and Bruce opened the interview by saying, "I'm handicapped! So what?"
Nathalie is a dwarf, Bruce is not. He was born on Dayton's Bluff in St. Paul without arms, a small body and one leg much longer than the other. It was not in Bruce from the very beginning to be overlooked in a full-size world; he played hockey as the practice goalie with heavy magazines up his pant legs. He even had a jersey from the Bluff Pirates.
"We played in the streets, and when a cop car came, I could move just as fast as any of them," he said.
When he was 21, it was time to vote in his first election. Bruce's father took him to City Hall to register, and a clerk there solicitously told Bruce, "Your father can sign it."
Bruce's dad said, "He'll sign it himself," and Bruce did, with his toes.
Bruce's achievements and his sheer determination caught the attention of legendary Minneapolis newspaper columnist Cedric Adams, who in 1936 wrote, "He's bright as a dollar … to throw (a baseball) he rests on his half leg, kicks off his other shoe and pitches with his long leg. You'd be surprised at the length of the toss. He's the kind of kid that'll take the gripe out of anybody."
Nathalie comes from Kasota, Minn., all 4 feet, 2 inches of her. ("I stand short and sit tall," she told reporters at their wedding.) She went to Gustavus Adolphus College for one year, learned watchmaking in St. Paul and has worked as a proofreader at West Publishing Co. Most recently she was a teacher's aide.
She caught Bruce's eye in the 1950s at a service club for the handicapped in St. Paul. She had just gotten a car (with hand controls), which bought her a lot of attention.
"Two guys heard me say I had my car, and both proposed to me the same night," she says with a laugh.
Bruce won.
"When you see a good deal, you got to jump on it," he says.
Bruce, a 1940 graduate of Mechanic Arts High School, tried once to get a job at a candy company but was turned down — not because he couldn't do the work but because the brass worried about what the customers might think if they found out one of the employees helped make the product with his feet.
He did get a job at the Goodwill Industries cutting stencils, operating office machinery, typing out paychecks and financial reports. In his spare time, he ran the switchboard.
With his toes.
Bruce also loved to play cribbage. One of his friends once told me Bruce would hop up on the table and take his turn at shuffling and dealing. People would gather around because that was a sight to see, and one time after a particularly good hand, a well-meaning spectator began moving Bruce's peg.
Bruce gave the guy a playful little tap alongside the head with his foot and said, "I'll do my own pegging, thank you."
Naturally, Bruce and Nathalie attracted attention, and a fund was once started to get them out of public housing and into a place of their own on the East Side. With the help of late St. Paul Dispatch columnist Gareth Hiebert and WCCO-TV's Dave Moore, the fund grew large enough for a down payment on a home they moved into in 1967.
By then, they had two children of their own, Timothy, who is an average-size person, and Sue, and a foster child, David. David and Sue (and Sue's husband) are dwarfs, as is Sue's son. Tim has three average-size children.
I know that some of her parents' determination was passed along to Sue because I once chaperoned a 30-mile elementary school bicycle trip around Bald Eagle and White Bear lakes in which Sue did the whole ride not on a 10-speed bike like the rest of us had, but on a little direct-drive toy of a bike not much bigger than a roller skate.
Nathalie and Bruce will celebrate their anniversary Friday. They won't have a big party until March, when Sue and her family come home from Salem, Mass. Now, they'll probably celebrate at their country club, which is the food court of Maplewood Mall.
Bruce and Nathalie go there several times a week from their Oakdale home so Nathalie can walk the mall and Bruce can pass the time with his buddies.
"It's fun to see the little kids and how they react to us," Bruce says. "One of them looked at Nath and told her mother, 'Look at the little grandmother!'
"I had one little girl come up to me one day, and her mother wanted her to come closer, and then I could see that she was very, very interested in me.
"She, too, had no arms."
What's another really good thing that's happened to you, I ask Bruce.
"Cordless phones. I love 'em."
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